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1.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 32(2): 229-252, 2024.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38306088

RESUMO

Compared with conventional single-energy computed tomography (CT), dual-energy CT (DECT) provides better material differentiation but most DECT imaging systems require dual full-angle projection data at different X-ray spectra. Relaxing the requirement of data acquisition is an attractive research to promote the applications of DECT in wide range areas and reduce the radiation dose as low as reasonably achievable. In this work, we design a novel DECT imaging scheme with dual quarter scans and propose an efficient method to reconstruct the desired DECT images from the dual limited-angle projection data. We first study the characteristics of limited-angle artifacts under dual quarter scans scheme, and find that the negative and positive artifacts of DECT images are complementarily distributed in image domain because the corresponding X-rays of high- and low-energy scans are symmetric. Inspired by this finding, a fusion CT image is generated by integrating the limited-angle DECT images of dual quarter scans. This strategy enhances the true image information and suppresses the limited-angle artifacts, thereby restoring the image edges and inner structures. Utilizing the capability of neural network in the modeling of nonlinear problem, a novel Anchor network with single-entry double-out architecture is designed in this work to yield the desired DECT images from the generated fusion CT image. Experimental results on the simulated and real data verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. This work enables DECT on imaging configurations with half-scan and largely reduces scanning angles and radiation doses.


Assuntos
Algoritmos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X , Imagens de Fantasmas , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Redes Neurais de Computação , Cintilografia
2.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 31(2): 319-336, 2023.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36683486

RESUMO

BACKGROUND: Computed tomography (CT) plays an important role in the field of non-destructive testing. However, conventional CT images often have blurred edge and unclear texture, which is not conducive to the follow-up medical diagnosis and industrial testing work. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to generate high-resolution CT images using a new CT super-resolution reconstruction method combining with the sparsity regularization and deep learning prior. METHODS: The new method reconstructs CT images through a reconstruction model incorporating image gradient L0-norm minimization and deep image priors using a plug-and-play super-resolution framework. The deep learning priors are learned from a deep residual network and then plugged into the proposed new framework, and alternating direction method of multipliers is utilized to optimize the iterative solution of the model. RESULTS: The simulation data analysis results show that the new method improves the signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) by 7% and the modulation transfer function (MTF) curves show that the value of MTF50 increases by 0.02 factors compared with the result of deep plug-and-play super-resolution. Additionally, the real CT image data analysis results show that the new method improves the PSNR by 5.1% and MTF50 by 0.11 factors. CONCLUSION: Both simulation and real data experiments prove that the proposed new CT super-resolution method using deep learning priors can reconstruct CT images with lower noise and better detail recovery. This method is flexible, effective and extensive for low-resolution CT image super-resolution.


Assuntos
Algoritmos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X , Imagens de Fantasmas , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos , Simulação por Computador
3.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 31(1): 63-84, 2023.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36314189

RESUMO

PURPOSE: Low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) has promising potential for dose reduction in medical applications, while suffering from low image quality caused by noise. Therefore, it is in urgent need for developing new algorithms to obtain high-quality images for LDCT. METHODS: This study tries to exploit the sparse and low-rank properties of images and proposes a new algorithm based on subspace identification. The collection of transmission data is sparsely represented by singular value decomposition and the eigen-images are then denoised by block-matching frames. Then, the projection is regularized by the correlation information under the frame of prior image compressed sensing (PICCS). With the application of a typical analytical algorithm on the processed projection, the target images are obtained. Both numerical simulations and real data verifications are carried out to test the proposed algorithm. The numerical simulations data is obtained based on real clinical scanning three-dimensional data and the real data is obtained by scanning experimental head phantom. RESULTS: In simulation experiment, using new algorithm boots the means of PSNR and SSIM by 1 dB and 0.05, respectively, compared with BM3D under the Gaussian noise with variance 0.04. Meanwhile, on the real data, the proposed algorithm exhibits superiority over compared algorithms in terms of noise suppression, detail preservation and computational overhead. The means of PSNR and SSIM are improved by 1.84 dB and 0.1, respectively, compared with BM3D under the Gaussian noise with variance 0.04. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates the feasibility and advantages of a new algorithm based on subspace identification for LDCT. It exploits the similarity among three-dimensional data to improve the image quality in a concise way and shows a promising potential on future clinical diagnosis.


Assuntos
Algoritmos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Simulação por Computador , Imagens de Fantasmas , Doses de Radiação , Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos
4.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 30(3): 613-630, 2022.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-35342073

RESUMO

BACKGROUND: Image reconstruction for realistic medical images under incomplete observation is still one of the core tasks for computed tomography (CT). However, the stair-case artifacts of Total variation (TV) based ones have restricted the usage of the reconstructed images. OBJECTIVE: This work aims to propose and test an accurate and efficient algorithm to improve reconstruction quality under the idea of synergy between local and nonlocal regularizations. METHODS: The total variation combining the nonlocal means filtration is proposed and the alternating direction method of multipliers is utilized to develop an efficient algorithm. The first order approximation of linear expansion at intermediate point is applied to overcome the computation of the huge CT system matrix. RESULTS: The proposed method improves root mean squared error by 25.6% compared to the recent block-matching sparsity regularization (BMSR) on simulation dataset of 19 views. The structure similarities of image of the new method is higher than 0.95, while that of BMSR is about 0.92. Moreover, on real rabbit dataset of 20 views, the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of the new method is 36.84, while using other methods PSNR are lower than 35.81. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed method shows advantages on noise suppression and detail preservations over the competing algorithms used in CT image reconstruction.


Assuntos
Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X , Algoritmos , Animais , Artefatos , Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos , Imagens de Fantasmas , Coelhos , Razão Sinal-Ruído , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos
5.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 29(1): 91-109, 2021.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-33459686

RESUMO

The excessive radiation doses in the application of computed tomography (CT) technology pose a threat to the health of patients. However, applying a low radiation dose in CT can result in severe artifacts and noise in the captured images, thus affecting the diagnosis. Therefore, in this study, we investigate a dual residual convolution neural network (DRCNN) for low-dose CT (LDCT) imaging, whereby the CT images are reconstructed directly from the sinogram by integrating analytical domain transformations, thus reducing the loss of projection information. With this new framework, feature extraction is performed simultaneously on both the sinogram-domain sub-net and the image-domain sub-net, which utilize the residual shortcut networks and play a complementary role in suppressing the projection noise and reducing image error. This new DRCNN approach helps not only decrease the sinogram noise but also preserve significant structural information. The experimental results of simulated and real projection data demonstrate that our DRCNN achieve superior performance over other state-of-art methods in terms of visual inspection and quantitative metrics. For example, comparing with RED-CNN and DP-ResNet, the value of PSNR using our DRCNN is improved by nearly 3 dB and 1 dB, respectively.


Assuntos
Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador , Redes Neurais de Computação , Artefatos , Humanos , Razão Sinal-Ruído , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X
6.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 29(1): 37-61, 2021.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-33104055

RESUMO

Dual-energy computed tomography (DECT) provides more anatomical and functional information for image diagnosis. Presently, the popular DECT imaging systems need to scan at least full angle (i.e., 360°). In this study, we propose a DECT using complementary limited-angle scan (DECT-CL) technology to reduce the radiation dose and compress the spatial distribution of the imaging system. The dual-energy total scan is 180°, where the low- and high-energy scan range is the first 90° and last 90°, respectively. We describe this dual limited-angle problem as a complementary limited-angle problem, which is challenging to obtain high-quality images using traditional reconstruction algorithms. Furthermore, a complementary-sinogram-inpainting generative adversarial networks (CSI-GAN) with a sinogram loss is proposed to inpainting sinogram to suppress the singularity of truncated sinogram. The sinogram loss focuses on the data distribution of the generated sinogram while approaching the target sinogram. We use the simultaneous algebraic reconstruction technique namely, a total variable (SART-TV) algorithms for image reconstruction. Then, taking reconstructed CT images of pleural and cranial cavity slices as examples, we evaluate the performance of our method and numerically compare different methods based on root mean square error (RMSE), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity (SSIM). Compared with traditional algorithms, the proposed network shows advantages in numerical terms. Compared with Patch-GAN, the proposed network can also reduce the RMSE of the reconstruction results by an average of 40% and increase the PSNR by an average of 26%. In conclusion, both qualitative and quantitative comparison and analysis demonstrate that our proposed method achieves a good artifact suppression effect and can suitably solve the complementary limited-angle problem.


Assuntos
Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X , Algoritmos , Artefatos , Imagens de Fantasmas , Razão Sinal-Ruído
7.
Sensors (Basel) ; 19(18)2019 Sep 12.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-31547346

RESUMO

Limited-angle computed tomography (CT) image reconstruction is a challenging problem in the field of CT imaging. In some special applications, limited by the geometric space and mechanical structure of the imaging system, projections can only be collected with a scanning range of less than 90°. We call this kind of serious limited-angle problem the ultra-limited-angle problem, which is difficult to effectively alleviate by traditional iterative reconstruction algorithms. With the development of deep learning, the generative adversarial network (GAN) performs well in image inpainting tasks and can add effective image information to restore missing parts of an image. In this study, given the characteristic of GAN to generate missing information, the sinogram-inpainting-GAN (SI-GAN) is proposed to restore missing sinogram data to suppress the singularity of the truncated sinogram for ultra-limited-angle reconstruction. We propose the U-Net generator and patch-design discriminator in SI-GAN to make the network suitable for standard medical CT images. Furthermore, we propose a joint projection domain and image domain loss function, in which the weighted image domain loss can be added by the back-projection operation. Then, by inputting a paired limited-angle/180° sinogram into the network for training, we can obtain the trained model, which has extracted the continuity feature of sinogram data. Finally, the classic CT reconstruction method is used to reconstruct the images after obtaining the estimated sinograms. The simulation studies and actual data experiments indicate that the proposed method performed well to reduce the serious artifacts caused by ultra-limited-angle scanning.


Assuntos
Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Artefatos , Bases de Dados Factuais , Cabeça/diagnóstico por imagem , Humanos , Imagens de Fantasmas
8.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 27(2): 371-388, 2019.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-30856151

RESUMO

Total variation (TV) regularization-based iterative reconstruction algorithms have an impressive potential to solve limited-angle computed tomography with insufficient sampling projections. The analysis of exact reconstruction sampling conditions for a TV-minimization reconstruction model can determine the minimum number of scanning angle and minimize the scanning range. However, the large-scale matrix operations caused by increased testing phantom size are the computation bottleneck in determining the exact reconstruction sampling conditions in practice. When the size of the testing phantom increases to a certain scale, it is very difficult to analyze quantitatively the exact reconstruction sampling condition using existing methods. In this paper, we propose a fast and efficient algorithm to determine the exact reconstruction sampling condition for large phantoms. Specifically, the sampling condition of a TV minimization model is modeled as a convex optimization problem, which is derived from the sufficient and necessary condition of solution uniqueness for the L1 minimization model. An effective alternating direction minimization algorithm is developed to optimize the objective function by alternatively solving two sub-problems split from the convex problem. The Cholesky decomposition method is used in solving the first sub-problem to reduce computational complexity. Experimental results show that the proposed method can efficiently solve the verification problem of the accurate reconstruction sampling condition. Furthermore, we obtain the lower bounds of scanning angle range for the exact reconstruction of a specific phantom with the larger size.


Assuntos
Algoritmos , Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Imagens de Fantasmas
9.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 26(5): 785-803, 2018.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-29991153

RESUMO

Since the excessive radiation dose may induce potential body lesion, the low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) is widely applied for clinical diagnosis and treatment. However, the dose reduction will inevitably cause severe noise and degrade image quality. Most state-of-the-art methods utilize a pre-determined regularizer to account for the prior images, which may be insufficient for the most images acquired in the clinical practice. This study proposed and investigated a joint regularization method combining a data-driven tight frame and total variation (DDTF-TV) to solve this problem. Unlike the existing methods that designed pre-determined sparse transform for image domain, data-driven regularizer introduced a learning strategy to adaptively and iteratively update the framelets of DDTF, which can preferably recover the detailed image structures. The other regularizer, TV term can reconstruct strong edges and suppress noise. The joint term, DDTF-TV, collaboratively affect detail preservation and noise suppression. The proposed new model was efficiently solved by alternating the direction method of the multipliers. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations were carried out in simulation and real data experiments to demonstrate superiority of the proposed DDTF-TV method. Both visual inspection and numerical accuracy analysis show the potential of the proposed method for improving image quality of the LDCT.


Assuntos
Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Algoritmos , Artefatos , Simulação por Computador , Cabeça/diagnóstico por imagem , Humanos , Imagens de Fantasmas
10.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 25(5): 813-829, 2017.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-28527236

RESUMO

Iterative reconstruction algorithms for computed tomography (CT) through total variation (TV) regularization can provide accurate and stable reconstruction results. TV minimization is the L1-norm of gradient-magnitude images and can be regarded as a convex relaxation method to replace the L0 norm. In this study, a fast and efficient algorithm, which is named a weighted difference of L1 and L2 (L1 - αL2) on the gradient minimization, was proposed and investigated. The new algorithm provides a better description of sparsity for the optimization-based algorithms than TV minimization algorithms. The alternating direction method is an efficient method to solve the proposed model, which is utilized in this study. Both simulations and real CT projections were tested to verify the performances of the proposed algorithm. In the simulation experiments, the reconstructions from the proposed method provided better image quality than TV minimization algorithms with only 7 views in 180 degrees, which is also computationally faster. Meanwhile, the new algorithm enabled to achieve the final solution with less iteration numbers.


Assuntos
Algoritmos , Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Animais , Masculino , Modelos Biológicos , Imagens de Fantasmas , Coelhos
11.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 25(6): 959-980, 2017.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-28697576

RESUMO

Sparse-view imaging is a promising scanning approach which has fast scanning rate and low-radiation dose in X-ray computed tomography (CT). Conventional L1-norm based total variation (TV) has been widely used in image reconstruction since the advent of compressive sensing theory. However, with only the first order information of the image used, the TV often generates dissatisfactory image for some applications. As is widely known, image curvature is among the most important second order features of images and can potentially be applied in image reconstruction for quality improvement. This study incorporates the curvature in the optimization model and proposes a new total absolute curvature (TAC) based reconstruction method. The proposed model contains both total absolute curvature and total variation (TAC-TV), which are intended for better description of the featured complicated image. As for the practical algorithm development, the efficient alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is utilized, which generates a practical and easy-coded algorithm. The TAC-TV iterations mainly contain FFTs, soft-thresholding and projection operations and can be launched on graphics processing unit, which leads to relatively high performance. To evaluate the presented algorithm, both qualitative and quantitative studies were performed using various few view datasets. The results illustrated that the proposed approach yielded better reconstruction quality and satisfied convergence property compared with TV-based methods.


Assuntos
Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos , Interpretação de Imagem Radiográfica Assistida por Computador/métodos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Imagens de Fantasmas
12.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 25(3): 429-464, 2017.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-28157114

RESUMO

Nowadays, diversities of task-specific applications for computed tomography (CT) have already proposed multiple challenges for algorithm design of image reconstructions. Consequently, efficient algorithm design tool is necessary to be established. A fast and efficient algorithm design framework for CT image reconstruction, which is based on alternating direction method (ADM) with ordered subsets (OS), is proposed, termed as OS-ADM. The general ideas of ADM and OS have been abstractly introduced and then they are combined for solving convex optimizations in CT image reconstruction. Standard procedures are concluded for algorithm design which contain 1) model mapping, 2) sub-problem dividing and 3) solving, 4) OS level setting and 5) algorithm evaluation. Typical reconstruction problems are modeled as convex optimizations, including (non-negative) least-square, constrained L1 minimization, constrained total variation (TV) minimization and TV minimizations with different data fidelity terms. Efficient working algorithms for these problems are derived with detailed derivations by the proposed framework. In addition, both simulations and real CT projections are tested to verify the performances of two TV-based algorithms. Experimental investigations indicate that these algorithms are of the state-of-the-art performances. The algorithm instances show that the proposed OS-ADM framework is promising for practical applications.


Assuntos
Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Algoritmos , Humanos , Imagens de Fantasmas
13.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 24(5): 733-747, 2016 10 06.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-27392828

RESUMO

The optimization-based method that utilizes the additional sparse prior of region-of-interest (ROI) image, such as total variation, has been the subject of considerable research in problems of interior tomography reconstruction. One challenge for optimization-based iterative ROI image reconstruction is to build the relationship between ROI image and truncated projection data. When the reconstruction support region is smaller than the original object, an unsuitable representation of data fidelity may lead to bright truncation artifacts in the boundary region of field of view. In this work, we aim to develop an iterative reconstruction method to suppress the truncation artifacts and improve the image quality for direct ROI image reconstruction. A novel reconstruction approach is proposed based on an optimization problem involving a two-step filtering-based data fidelity. Data filtering is achieved in two steps: the first takes the derivative of projection data; in the second step, Hilbert filtering is applied in the differentiated data. Numerical simulations and real data reconstructions have been conducted to validate the new reconstruction method. Both qualitative and quantitative results indicate that, as theoretically expected, the proposed method brings reasonable performance in suppressing truncation artifacts and preserving detailed features. The presented local reconstruction method based on the two-step filtering strategy provides a simple and efficient approach for the iterative reconstruction from truncated projections.


Assuntos
Algoritmos , Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Cabeça/diagnóstico por imagem , Humanos , Modelos Biológicos , Imagens de Fantasmas
14.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 23(1): 1-10, 2015.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-25567402

RESUMO

Iterative image reconstruction (IIR) with sparsity-exploiting methods, such as total variation (TV) minimization, used for investigations in compressive sensing (CS) claim potentially large reductions in sampling requirements. Quantifying this claim for computed tomography (CT) is non-trivial, as both the singularity of undersampled reconstruction and the sufficient view number for sparse-view reconstruction are ill-defined. In this paper, the singular value decomposition method is used to study the condition number and singularity of the system matrix and the regularized matrix. An estimation method of the empirical lower bound is proposed, which is helpful for estimating the number of projection views required for exact reconstruction. Simulation studies show that the singularity of the system matrices for different projection views is effectively reduced by regularization. Computing the condition number of a regularized matrix is necessary to provide a reference for evaluating the singularity and recovery potential of reconstruction algorithms using regularization. The empirical lower bound is helpful for estimating the projections view number with a sparse reconstruction algorithm.


Assuntos
Algoritmos , Intensificação de Imagem Radiográfica/métodos , Interpretação de Imagem Radiográfica Assistida por Computador/métodos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Modelos Biológicos , Modelos Estatísticos , Análise Numérica Assistida por Computador , Reprodutibilidade dos Testes , Sensibilidade e Especificidade
15.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 23(1): 83-99, 2015.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-25567409

RESUMO

With the development of compressive sensing theory, image reconstruction from few-view projections has been paid considerable research attention in the field of computed tomography (CT). Total variation (TV)-based CT image reconstruction has been shown experimentally to be capable of producing accurate reconstructions from sparse-view data. Motivated by the need of solving few-view reconstruction problem with large scale data, a general block distribution reconstruction algorithm based on TV minimization and the alternating direction method (ADM) has been developed in this study. By utilizing the inexact ADM, which involves linearization and proximal point techniques, the algorithm is relatively simple and hence convenient for the derivation and distributed implementation. And because the data as well as the computation are distributed to individual nodes, an outstanding acceleration factor is achieved. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can accelerate the alternating direction total variation minimization (ADTVM) algorithm with nearly no loss of accuracy, which means compared with ADTVM, the proposed algorithm has a better accuracy with same running time.


Assuntos
Algoritmos , Intensificação de Imagem Radiográfica/métodos , Interpretação de Imagem Radiográfica Assistida por Computador/métodos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Reprodutibilidade dos Testes , Sensibilidade e Especificidade
16.
J Xray Sci Technol ; 22(3): 335-49, 2014.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-24865209

RESUMO

Linear scan computed tomography (CT) is a promising imaging configuration with high scanning efficiency while the data set is under-sampled and angularly limited for which high quality image reconstruction is challenging. In this work, an edge guided total variation minimization reconstruction (EGTVM) algorithm is developed in dealing with this problem. The proposed method is modeled on the combination of total variation (TV) regularization and iterative edge detection strategy. In the proposed method, the edge weights of intermediate reconstructions are incorporated into the TV objective function. The optimization is efficiently solved by applying alternating direction method of multipliers. A prudential and conservative edge detection strategy proposed in this paper can obtain the true edges while restricting the errors within an acceptable degree. Based on the comparison on both simulation studies and real CT data set reconstructions, EGTVM provides comparable or even better quality compared to the non-edge guided reconstruction and adaptive steepest descent-projection onto convex sets method. With the utilization of weighted alternating direction TV minimization and edge detection, EGTVM achieves fast and robust convergence and reconstructs high quality image when applied in linear scan CT with under-sampled data set.


Assuntos
Processamento de Imagem Assistida por Computador/métodos , Tomografia Computadorizada por Raios X/métodos , Algoritmos , Imagens de Fantasmas
17.
Quant Imaging Med Surg ; 14(6): 4155-4176, 2024 Jun 01.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38846275

RESUMO

Background: Dual-energy computed tomography (DECT) is a promising technique, which can provide unique capability for material quantification. The iterative reconstruction of material maps requires spectral information and its accuracy is affected by spectral mismatch. Simultaneously estimating the spectra and reconstructing material maps avoids extra workload on spectrum estimation and the negative impact of spectral mismatch. However, existing methods are not satisfactory in image detail preservation, edge retention, and convergence rate. The purpose of this paper was to mine the similarity between the reconstructed images and the material images to improve the imaging quality, and to design an effective iteration strategy to improve the convergence efficiency. Methods: The material-image subspace decomposition-based iterative reconstruction (MISD-IR) with spectrum estimation was proposed for DECT. MISD-IR is an optimized model combining spectral estimation and material reconstruction with fast convergence speed and promising noise suppression capability. We proposed to reconstruct the material maps based on extended simultaneous algebraic reconstruction techniques and estimation of the spectrum with model spectral. To stabilize the iteration and alleviate the influence of errors, we introduced a weighted proximal operator based on the block coordinate descending algorithm (WP-BCD). Furthermore, the reconstructed computed tomography (CT) images were introduced to suppress the noise based on subspace decomposition, which relies on non-local regularization to prevent noise accumulation. Results: In numerical experiments, the results of MISD-IR were closer to the ground truth compared with other methods. In real scanning data experiments, the results of MISD-IR showed sharper edges and details. Compared with other one-step iterative methods in the experiment, the running time of MISD-IR was reduced by 75%. Conclusions: The proposed MISD-IR can achieve accurate material decomposition (MD) without known energy spectrum in advance, and has good retention of image edges and details. Compared with other one-step iterative methods, it has high convergence efficiency.

18.
Quant Imaging Med Surg ; 13(2): 889-911, 2023 Feb 01.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36819241

RESUMO

Background: Multienergy computed tomography (MECT) is a promising imaging modality for material decomposition, lesion detection, and other clinical applications. However, there is an urgent need to design efficient and accurate algorithms to solve the inverse problems related to spectral reconstruction and improve image quality, especially under low-dose and incomplete datasets. The key issue for MECT reconstruction is how to efficiently describe the interchannel and intrachannel priors in multichannel images. Methods: In this model, in order to correlate the similarities of interchannel images and regularize the multichannel images, the global, local, and nonlocal priors are jointly integrated into the low-dose MECT reconstruction model. First, the subspace decomposition method first employs the global low-rankness to map the original MECT images to the low-dimensional eigenimages. Then, nonlocal self-similarity of the eigenimages is cascaded into the optimization model. Additionally, the L0 quasi-norm on gradient images is incorporated into the proposed method to further enhance the local sparsity of intrachannel images. The alternating direction method is applied to solve the optimization model in an iterative scheme. Results: Simulation, preclinical, and real datasets were applied to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. From the simulation dataset, the new method was found to reduce the root-mean-square error (RMSE) by 42.31% compared with the latest research fourth-order nonlocal tensor decomposition MECT reconstruction (FONT-SIR) method under 160 projection views. The calculation time of an iteration for the proposed method was 23.07% of the FONT-SIR method. The results of material decomposition in real mouse data further confirmed the accuracy of the proposed method for different materials. Conclusions: We developed a method in which the global, local, and nonlocal priors are jointly used to develop the reconstruction model for low-dose MECT, where the global low-rankness and nonlocal prior are cascaded by subspace decomposition and block-matching, and the L0 sparsity is applied to express the local prior. The results of the experiments demonstrate that the proposed method based on subspace improves computational efficiency and has advantages in noise suppression and structure preservation over competing algorithms.

19.
Bioengineering (Basel) ; 10(4)2023 Apr 12.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37106656

RESUMO

Spectral computed tomography (spectral CT) is a promising medical imaging technology because of its ability to provide information on material characterization and quantification. However, with an increasing number of basis materials, the nonlinearity of measurements causes difficulty in decomposition. In addition, noise amplification and beam hardening further reduce image quality. Thus, improving the accuracy of material decomposition while suppressing noise is pivotal for spectral CT imaging. This paper proposes a one-step multi-material reconstruction model as well as an iterative proximal adaptive decent method. In this approach, a proximal step and a descent step with adaptive step size are designed under the forward-backward splitting framework. The convergence analysis of the algorithm is further discussed according to the convexity of the optimization objective function. For simulation experiments with different noise levels, the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) obtained by the proposed method increases approximately 23 dB, 14 dB, and 4 dB compared to those of other algorithms. Magnified areas of thorax data further demonstrated that the proposed method has a better ability to preserve details in tissues, bones, and lungs. Numerical experiments verify that the proposed method efficiently reconstructed the material maps, and reduced noise and beam hardening artifacts compared with the state-of-the-art methods.

20.
Quant Imaging Med Surg ; 13(2): 610-630, 2023 Feb 01.
Artigo em Inglês | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36819292

RESUMO

Background: Multi-energy computed tomography (CT) provides multiple channel-wise reconstructed images, and they can be used for material identification and k-edge imaging. Nonetheless, the projection datasets are frequently corrupted by various noises (e.g., electronic, Poisson) in the acquisition process, resulting in lower signal-noise-ratio (SNR) measurements. Multi-energy CT images have local sparsity, nonlocal self-similarity in spatial dimension, and correlation in spectral dimension. Methods: In this paper, we propose an image-spectral decomposition extended-learning assisted by sparsity (IDEAS) method to fully exploit these intrinsic priors for multi-energy CT image reconstruction. Particularly, a nonlocal low-rank Tucker decomposition (TD) is employed to utilize the correlation and nonlocal self-similarity priors. Moreover, considering the advantages of multi-task tensor dictionary learning (TDL) in sparse representation, an adaptive spatial dictionary and an adaptive spectral dictionary are trained during the iterative reconstruction process. Furthermore, a weighted total variation (TV) regularization term is employed to encourage local sparsity. Results: Numerical simulation, physical phantom, and preclinical mouse experiments are performed to validate the proposed IDEAS algorithm. Specifically, in the simulation experiments, the proposed IDEAS reconstructed high-quality images that are very close to the references. For example, the root mean square error (RMSE) of IDEAS image in energy bin 1 is as low as 0.0672, while the RMSE of other methods are higher than 0.0843. Besides, the structural similarity (SSIM) of IDEAS reconstructed image in energy bin 1 is greater than 0.98. For material decomposition, the RMSE of IDEAS bone component is as low as 0.0152, and other methods are higher than 0.0199. In addition, the computational cost of IDEAS is as low as 98.8 s for one iteration, and the competing tensor decomposition method is higher than 327 s. Conclusions: To further improve the quality of the reconstructed multi-energy CT images, multiple prior regularizations are introduced to the multi-energy CT reconstructed model, leading to an IDEAS method. Both qualitative and quantitative evaluation of our results confirm the outstanding performance of the proposed algorithm compared to the state-of-the-arts.

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